Monday, January 04, 2016

It may be surprising that Luke Fischer and Henry Ellenson stayed pretty close to their overall national rankings after two Big East games (they are now at 106th and 347th). Basically, Value Add measures for the level of each opponent - and in essence viewed really good numbers against some very bad teams as being roughly the same performance as bad numbers against much stronger opponents.

The big problem right now is that the tiny chance of an at large bid being even lower at this point - it would likely take a Big East tournament win to make March Madness. The hard part is MU really must finish at least 6th to avoid a "play-in" game - three upsets in three nights while playing teams equally as tired is hard much trying to win four games in four days is near impossible (see performances against Seton Hall and then Villanova a few hours later from last year).

Anyway, not pretty, but here are the top 20 Value Add teams and where all Big East teams rank if you subtract all the players defense from offense (that's a lot of good teams to pass) followed by the Top 25 Value Add players in the conference and all Marquette's players.

Rnk

Team

Off

Def

Off-Def

1

Virginia

37.21

-9.83

47.05

2

Kansas

35.61

-11.11

46.73

3

Villanova

36.31

-9.42

45.74

4

Louisville

32.61

-12.25

44.86

5

Oklahoma

34.41

-10.24

44.65

6

Michigan St.

34.01

-10.03

44.05

7

Duke

37.01

-6.09

43.10

8

Xavier

31.71

-11.14

42.86

9

Miami FL

33.41

-8.69

42.10

10

Purdue

26.41

-15.68

42.09

11

West Virginia

28.81

-12.55

41.37

12

North Carolina

36.61

-4.56

41.17

13

SMU

36.51

-4.59

41.10

14

Maryland

32.21

-7.90

40.12

15

Arizona

29.71

-9.96

39.67

16

Kentucky

30.61

-8.77

39.39

17

Iowa

33.81

-5.36

39.17

18

Iowa St.

34.01

-4.71

38.73

19

Pittsburgh

33.71

-4.77

38.48

20

Saint Mary's

33.51

-4.22

37.74

33

Butler

34.51

-0.15

34.66

35

Providence

28.21

-6.15

34.36

45

Seton Hall

24.91

-6.81

31.72

59

Creighton

29.61

-0.58

30.19

71

Georgetown

25.71

-3.57

29.28

102

Marquette

20.00

-5.59

25.59

159

DePaul

21.01

0.01

21.00

302

St. John's

5.24

-1.93

7.17

As for Kris Dunn, he would rank third in the country if not for the three games in which he had the flu (he had a negative rating for the Boston University 15 minutes he played with the flu, and a 0.0 for the two games he missed).